GOP Rep. Comer on Twitter Files: ‘No Government Agency Has the Authority to Censor Free Speech’

During an appearance on FNC’s “Fox & Friends First,” Rep. James Comer (R-KY), who is set to be the new House Oversight Committee chairman in the next Congress, decried government resources being used to determine what was so-called “disinformation.”

Comer said that was not a role of the federal government and warned some government agencies may have overstepped their bounds.

“This is very concerning,” he said. “No government agency has the authority to censor free speech. I want to know is this a direct result of President Biden’s orders or is this a result of the deep state government agencies acting on their own as a result of a weak president. Either way, this needs to be stopped, and people need to be held accountable. Under no circumstances should any tax dollars be going to provide salaries and benefits for government employees who have their own initiative to determine what is disinformation and what is not. This is not a function of the government, and this needs to stop now.”

“This has become such a problem,” Comer continued. “Kevin McCarthy last week, and we had several meetings with Jim Jordan and myself with Kevin McCarthy. There is probably going to be a task force created – a Church-style select committee to make this a priority because these government agencies are out of control. We first thought that maybe this was one or two FBI employees who went rogue who were trying to inflict their political will upon the social media companies. But what we have learned now is there is a government agency of at least 80 people. I call it the FBI, the ministry of propaganda. Now we see the CIA had one. The Department of Defense had one, and the list goes on and on of government agencies that dedicated a big percentage of their time and workforce to monitoring social media. Now that’s OK if they’re monitoring things like child pornography or terrorism. But they were monitoring free speech, and this is not a role of the federal government.”

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.